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US to stop secret payments to Chalabi group

WASHINGTON: The United States will stop secret payments to the Iraqi National Congress (INC), headed by Ahmad Chalabi, finding that the information it has provided was useless, The New York Times said on Tuesday.

The monthly payments of 335,000 dollars made through the Defence Intelligence Agency began in 2002 and will end June 30, when the scheduled transfer of power from US-led coalition authorities to an Iraqi government takes place, an official with Chalabi’s group told the daily.

Totalling at least 27 million dollars, the classified programme helped the INC gather intelligence in Iraq, but internal reviews by the US government have found that much of the information provided before the US-led invasion last year was useless, misleading or fabricated, the daily said.

The INC defended its intelligence-gathering, telling the Times its role in providing weapons intelligence was overblown and that it had helped capture 1,500 insurgents, mostly people loyal to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The programme had been scheduled to end September 30 last year but was extended twice to December 31 and again to June 30, 2004.

The INC official quoted by the Times said he did not know why the US government decided not to extend the programme another time.

Chalabi was head of one of the foremost Iraqi opposition movements during the Saddam regime and managed to maintain close ties with the US authorities despite being wanted for multi-million dollar fraud in Jordan.

He was sentenced to 22 years hard labour by a Jordanian court in 1992 after being tried in his absence over the disappearance of 60 million dollars from the Petra Bank, which he set up in 1977 and which crashed in 1989.

He became one of his country’s best-known political figures in exile and even tipped as a possible successor to Saddam. However, he has consistently denied that he is a candidate for office in the new Iraq. afp

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